LOM: More Than a Scene
by Niana Kuonji
Summary: I can't think up a summary. Set after Elazul's wounding at Sandra's hands, our heroine and those around her have a chance to prove themselves as more than just characters in a scene.


Yes, I know I'm supposed to be working on the next chapters for Autumn Storms. Unfortunately, my Muse Shiku has been very lazy, and let me get bit by a random oneshot bunny wandering over from Fa'Diel. There's another one lurking around here somewhere for the 'Teardrop Crystal' adventure, but it hasn't quite sunk its fangs in yet. So please consider this as just what it is: a random oneshot that will hopefully tide you over for a bit while I smack the rest of my non-Mana characters into cooperating. I'm stuck again (still, whatever).

But I'm working on it!

Standard disclaimer: I do not Mana except for merchandise. All variations from the original script are on purpose or from being unable to write everything down without playing through the game for the umpteenth time. I claim Author's Perogative, and now go back to my other fics.

———

Rei sat in the chair she'd dragged from her bedroom's table, her chin cupped in her hand as she watched the slow breathing of her bed's occupant. Silky green-blue hair tumbled across pillow and shoulders, renegade bangs falling into a handsome face and hiding thick lashes from sight. The jewel grown into his skin and muscle matched his eyes exactly, the same shade of cerulean blue. It gleamed just below the dip of his collarbone, clearly visible due to the fact that Rei had had to leave him only his pants to keep the idiot from getting up and getting himself killed.

His name was Elazul. He was a member of the race called Jumi, long thought lost by almost everyone in the world. He was a Knight of his people, calling Lapis Lazuli his own. He was Rei's friend, a staunch ally. Quick to anger, slow to cool, he was brash, headstrong, and frighteningly young for a Jumi. A little older than Rei herself, it should have been years before he'd taken the mantle of a Jumi Knight and the role of a Guardian's protector.

It had been three days since he'd nearly died.

Rei could see it all replaying in her mind again: looking for Pearl, Elazul's charge, once again in the caves beyond Luon Highway. Finding her in the company of Alexandra the Core Hunter and a strange male who claimed to be of no importance. Sandra, threatening and then wounding Elazul all for the goal of getting Pearl to cry—a skill lost to all but one Jumi, Sandra's own charge—or to remember…something.

Sandra failing to wring even one tear from Pearl, instead invoking a rush of anger and fierce protectiveness that ended in Pearl's transformation from gentle, forgetful girl to harsh warrior. Who had then walked off without a single backwards glance at her Knight after Sandra had vanished in the face of Blackpearl's rage. The stranger had left after transporting Rei and Elazul to the fighter woman's home.

Anxious green eyes flickered to the stone in Elazul's chest, his fragile and beautiful core, the life of every Jumi. They settled on the pale blue substance working to fill in the gash that marred the surface. Sandra had wounded him there with one of her razor-edged throwing cards, knowing full well that to have cut a little deeper would have meant the Knight's death.  
And not caring.

Involuntarily, her fingers stretched out, tracing over Elazul's core in the lightest touch possible. It pulsed gently with the man's heartbeat, warm and silken beneath fingertips callused from playing instruments for elementals and knife-fighting. The edges of the filling gash were rounded, his pulse felt stronger there. Elazul's breathing hitched, shifting into a lighter rhythm. Rei moved her fingers and brushed the renegade hair out his face so that he could blink over at her with eyes glazed from sleep. "Welcome back," Rei murmured. "I have to admit I was worried there for a while. You've been asleep for three days."

"T-thr—" Elazul croaked, his eyes going wide. He cleared his throat, tried again. "T-three days?"

Rei nodded. "Do you remember anything?"

The Knight frowned, obviously sifting through memories. Rei knew he remembered the important parts when his eyes widened again, whatever color he'd regained over the last three days of rest vanishing to leave him ashen pale. She was ready to hold him down when he tried to lunge up and out of the bed, a task that was disturbingly easy. It had been harder when he'd been out of his mind with pain and worry, when she'd just gotten him home. That had been when she'd had to take away his armor and sword and enough clothes for him to understand that she _would_ strip him bare if she had to.

"_Pearl!_ Let me up, Rei! I need to find her!"

Rei kept her voice gentle, but her hand pressing his shoulder into the mattress never wavered. "Perhaps. But Elazul, I'm barely making an effort to keep you still. Can you say the same for attempting to rise?"

"Rei, _please_."

"Elazul, I'm not going to let you up until I have to _work_ at holding you down. As you are now, the first monster to come along will kill you without effort. As will Sandra, if she chooses to steal your core instead of damage it."

Elazul stilled. "That explains why it's hard to breathe," he muttered, sinking back into the mattress.

"It does," Rei agreed mildly. "Are you going to stay put, or will I have to take your pants as well, and let you go rescuing in your breechclout?"

"Stay," Elazul growled. The young woman removed her hand, and leaned back in her chair.

"All right. Since you're listening to reason for a change, let me first reassure you that I have not been sitting idle. Lisa and Bud have been taking care of you while I checked the area around my home. Neither Pearl nor Blackpearl are in Domina, the Mekiv Caverns, or at Luon Highway. Those are the places I have searched."

"So there's no sign of either?"

"No. Not there. But I haven't checked the farther areas yet." Rei sighed, leaning forward and resting her chin on her laced fingers. "To tell you the truth, I was more worried about you. Blackpearl seems well able to take care of herself, and if she remains the dominant personality then she won't be in danger from monsters or Sandra."

"Why not?"

Rei gave him a tired smile. "You must've been nearly unconscious by then. When Blackpearl surfaced, _Sandra ran_. That bodes favorable for our lass' fighting skills. If Sandra won't face her, then monsters won't have much hope against her. The jewel beast she and I fought together certainly didn't."

Elazul made a lost sound, his expression that of someone crying without tears. "Rei, she left me," he said softly. "It's not just that I am her Knight. I'm a Jumi, and she abandoned me with nothing more than a 'goodbye'. She was the greatest of us, once. Blackpearl protected all of the Jumi from those who would hurt us. How could she do that?"

Rei reached out, her hand resting on his shoulder, this time in a gesture of comfort instead of restraint. "I don't know, Elazul. When we find her, we can ask her. Until then, rest and heal while I keep looking."

"Master Rei?" The young woman looked up from hurting blue eyes to find a petite Elf girl standing by the banister guarding the way downstairs. She held a cup from of something red and dark that smelled sweet. "I made some juice for Mister Elazul. Rocket papaya and apricat. Bud said that if I was going to make something calming for the Knight, I should've just drowned him in apricat juice when you got him here."

Rei managed to hide the amused smile those words brought out. Bud was her other apprentice, twin to Lisa but appearing at least a year behind her in height and looks. His blunt, honest opinions about everything—the unfavorable ones about Elazul in particular—always made her smile. Accepting the cup from Lisa, she replied in a light tone, "Well then, you can tell Bud that I said Elazul isn't the only one who could do with a small attitude adjustment, and that I suggested he help you make a peach-puppy cobbler for dessert tonight."

Lisa grinned. If her master felt happy enough to tease Bud, even indirectly, then the Jumi man would be okay. That was good. As she turned to trot downstairs to deliver Master's Rei's message to Bud, she heard, "And thank you for at least trying to get along."

Lisa paused, one foot already on the stairs, and gave her master a bigger smile from around the banister. "It isn't too hard," she replied cheerfully. "Besides, I like him. He makes you smile even more than Bud can. Even when you're complaining about him, you smile." With that, she pattered downstairs in search of her brother, leaving her red-faced master to help blushing Elazul drink.

——

The next morning Rei had gone, leaving Elazul still in her bed to rest and think. The two of them had gone over the possible places Blackpearl or Pearl might have gone, as well as the idea to recheck the three areas Rei had already searched. The places at the top of the list were those who had a natural mystic draw to them. The Tower of Leires was at the very top of the list but Rei demurred going there first, saying that she'd rather have Elazul there with her for that one in case something meaner than Sandra or her jewel beasts showed up. Instead, Rei'd head for Gato Grottoes, the Ulkan Mines, and the Mindas Ruins as the next likeliest places.

Neither Rei nor Elazul spoke aloud the thought that had been troubling them: Blackpearl might decide that she didn't _want_ Pearl to resume being the dominant personality, and fight Pearl's friends to keep herself on top.

Or worse, that _Pearl_ wouldn't want to resume her place, leaving Elazul alone again.

Just as Elazul was getting to that part in his looped thinking again, Lisa appeared from below, carrying what looked—and smelled—like a proper breakfast. Honeyed porridge, fruit, and more calming juice. His mouth watered.

Lisa proved surprisingly strong for someone her size when she helped Elazul limp to the small table her master kept up here, nibbling on a few cherry bombs while the Jumi Knight tucked in. She was staying to make sure he didn't fall over, or something else that would make her master upset with him when she came home.

Elazul was safely back in bed and Lisa was tidying the breakfast things away when he finally spoke more than his single, quiet 'thank you'. "What did you mean, yesterday, about me making Rei smile?" It sounded like the question had been bothering him almost as much as the ones about Pearl.

Lisa blinked at him, taken aback by the sudden question, though she'd been expecting something involving that since she'd said it. Then she set the plate she'd picked up on the tray, and turned to give her temporary patient her full and undivided attention.

"Master Rei was pretty serious when we first met her," the young Elf explained, letting the words come as they would. "Of course, you might think that it would have been because Bud was trying to take over everything with a bunch of pumpkins, but when she made us her apprentices, we found out that was how she always was. She was always nice, but she hardly ever smiled."

Elazul stayed silent, and Lisa went on. "As she spent more time with us, Bud figured out that he could get her to smile and laugh by saying exactly what he thought, as directly as possible. Even when it wasn't very nice. Not counting you, he's actually gotten nicer about things since we came. Master Rei's gentled him some. Then she met you."

"I remember that. I was yelling at a girl in the pub in Domina—that was where I'd tracked Pearl to."

"Master told us about that, and how she sidetracked you into talking about your problem instead of yelling at Rachel some more. She also told us you were stubborn, overprotective, and the most loyal person she'd ever met," Lisa told him bluntly. "But what confused Bud and me for a while, was that she was smiling every second she told us about you and finding Pearl."

She had? Elazul had noticed that she'd smiled a lot down in Mekiv Caverns, but he'd put it down to an enjoyment of fighting. Now that he thought about it, though, that smile had gotten a little more cheerful every time he'd stepped between her and a monster. Maybe he _had_ been overprotective…

The strange little smile that Lisa had been wearing disappeared, the young girl twisting a clean napkin into knots. "Then one day, Master Rei came home from Gato Grottoes with the same look she was wearing four days ago when she brought you here. Like someone had taken her favorite knife, stuck it in her heart, and twisted. She didn't talk to us, didn't explain anything, just shut herself in the monster barn with Nip," the only Rabite Elazul had ever met that was as cuddly as the exterior, "and Tsuta." How a Rattler Boa could manage to look cute was beyond Elazul, but damned if Rei's second pet monster didn't manage it. "She stayed there all day, skipped supper, and we think she slept out there, too. She hadn't been inside before Bud and I went to bed, but she was up before both of us. We were eating breakfast when she told us 'Someone stole the Flame of Hope' and that was all she ever said about it."

Elazul felt a pang that had nothing to do with his healing injury. "So she was there," he murmured, feeling his own heart hurt. He'd gotten the news of Rubens' death while on one of his usual searches for Pearl, but he hadn't even thought that Rei might have been there to see it. For some reason, that hurt almost as much as knowing one of the last of his kind had died at Sandra's hands.

Lisa didn't look surprised that he knew more than she did about the story. She just kept going. "Master didn't smile for a few days after that, until she bumped into you again in Domina's pub. When she came home, she talked about an adventure you had at Madora Beach and the trip to Duma Desert. It wasn't like the theft had never happened, 'cause I saw her looking sad about something, sometimes, when she thought no one was watching. It was like there was too much to smile and laugh about for her _not_ to smile."

One of Elazul's fondest memories of recent times was that showdown in Duma that had somehow ended in a display of gorgeous fireworks. Rei had laughed aloud, watching the colorful explosions fill the sky. _"The only thing,"_ she'd confided to him later, _"that could have made that better was if it had been at night."_

"See?" Lisa said, breaking him from the memory, "You're smiling, too." And Elazul found that he was. "After Master found Pearl at Leires and escorted her in and out, she came home swearing and laughing about your offer to 'take care of the small fry'. She complained a lot the next couple days that your version of it meant letting her plow through all the monsters she'd dealt with on the way up all the way down again, with Pearl doing this cute little squeak of frustration whenever she had to duck behind Master without hitting back. And Sandra and her jewel beast. Master complained a lot about them, too. And except for when she complained about Sandra, she smiled.

"Every time a Jumi core got stolen, she'd do what she did the first time and go hole up in the monster barn, or lock herself in her forge or her instruments workshop for the whole day. She hasn't turned to stone yet so I suppose she's never actually cried for any of them, but her heart hurts. Bud and I, we didn't realize that the jewels she talked about were Jumi cores until the day you and Master came back from Geo with the same stormclouds in your eyes, and you told us about that emerald Jumi girl. Master was too busy making sure that Pearl, at least, was okay to lock herself away. And every time I thought she might cry, you would do something to make her smile again. Even if it was just trying to learn how to cut up vegetables without hurting yourself."

Lisa turned, picked up the tray, and gave Elazul a look that was far too serious for any child to be wearing. "Master Rei likes you," she said, again choosing to be frank at her mentor's possible expense. "She calls you and Pearl the closest friends she has. That hurts Bud, because he can't understand the difference between the friendship Master has with us, her apprentices, and the friendship she has with you. Master won't abandon us, and she'll fight anyone that tries to hurt people she cares about. So she'll wear herself out looking for Pearl. She'll forget to eat, she won't sleep unless she's about to drop, and she'll go through any monster that gets in her way even if she could go around if it's faster.

"She wants you safe and healed because she cares a lot about you. You and Pearl are the reasons that she didn't cry over the emerald Jumi girl she wasn't able to save, or any of the other Jumi that Sandra snatched from under her nose. If you or Pearl die, then we lose our master, because we won't be able to stop her from crying. She'll turn to stone if she loses either of you. That, Mister Elazul, is why Bud doesn't like you. I do, because even if she does turn to stone, she'll have smiled more because she knew you.

"But…please. Don't let her turn to stone."

———

Rei came back a little over a week later, not as worn out as Lisa had thought she'd be—Elazul guessed that that had something to do with a tired Nip being carried in his owner's arms. The Rabite could do a marvelous job hinting that now would be a good time to eat, or reminding a person that night is for sleeping. Elazul had noted that in his other adventures with the fighter and her pets.

"Anything?" he asked her when she came up, even though he knew what the answer would be. Rei collapsed into her chair after pulling it back over to the bed. Elazul was propped up with a few extra pillows so that he could read a book Lisa had picked for him from her mentor's store of them.

"Nothing. No hint, no sign. I thought Pearl alone was hard to find, but with Blackpearl in the mix it's damned near impossible."

"Did you go to Leires?"

Rei scowled at him. "Do I look suicidal to you? Elazul, the last time I went into that place I ended up fighting a vicious jewel beast and a giant freaking _centaur_. Alone, I might add. Neither of my pets would be enough of a help, Bud and Lisa are too inexperienced to fight things like that, and I am not bringing that dragoon into this mess. And anyway, I needed my apprentices here to look after things."

"And me."

"And you," she agreed. "Besides, the last time I went to Leires without a Jumi I got Boinked out of there before I set one foot through the gates. Damn Boinks," she finished in a dark mutter.

"Only useful half the time or less," Elazul added, heartfelt annoyance at the creatures in his voice. Large, pink creatures that looked like a child's patchwork hippopotamus with too many legs, Boinks had the unique ability to teleport a person who touched them to the end of their tail—wherever that tail ended, something that seemed to vary a lot.

Rei nodded once to second the emotion, then changed the subject. "How are you feeling?"

"Better, but still a little weak," Elazul replied. "Lisa's been taking good care of me and making sure I eat plenty of things from your garden."

"Ah," sighed Rei with obvious longing, "fresh fruit. I can't wait. I'm going to get something to munch on, take a bath, and maybe find something useful in my library before I go to sleep. Do you need anything?" she queried, half-risen.

"No, thank you."

"All right, then. We'll head off to Leires when you feel up to it." With a wave of her hand, Rei ambled off down below. Elazul read for a little while longer, then fell asleep despite himself and all the rest he'd been getting. He only half-woke when someone came back upstairs, and stayed in that between place when he recognized Rei's voice. She was murmuring—perhaps to her cactus? Lisa had mentioned that she told it things whenever she got back from an adventure—and the soft rhythm of her words, touched with an accent he'd never heard anywhere else, chased away his most recent nightmare. He heard her mention something about Niccolo, a rather oversized rabbit-man with a greed matched only by his girth, and a vampire that had thirsted for the blood of the innocent dove. More clearly, he heard her vow to never bring Pearl to the Ruins, in case the vanquishing Rei had given the blood-sucker hadn't taken.

After that, her footsteps went past him and echoed down the stairs. A moment later, Elazul caught the sounds of a light patter, as of oddly-shaped, small feet running across the floor, and a quill-on-parchment kind of noise. He managed to crack an eye open in time to see that cactus of Rei's scurry back to its' pot and climb in, for all the world like it had never left. Elazul decided he had gone back to sleep and was dreaming—for who had ever heard of a cactus that walked?—and closed his eye again.

When he woke fully, night and the moon were sitting outside the open window, singing their lullabies to the creatures of day. The house was quiet, with only the occasional creak as the house or the tree it was built into settled. Elazul swung his legs over the edge of his soft, bar-free cage and winced as he stood. His core-wound, almost healed, complained mightily about him being on his feet without any kind of external support. The Knight sternly told his nerves endings to be quiet, added a finger to his lips for the cactus in case it thought about tattling, and slipped past the two Elf children asleep on the long padded bench under the window.

Going down the stairs with only the railings was a bit more of a challenge than just walking, but Elazul managed it, digging his things out of the chest by the kitchen-nook and slipping into them with a satisfying lack of noise. Even his sword was quiet as he strapped it on, as if it too, wanted to get away noiselessly.

Cat-quiet, Elazul crept to the library door and opened it enough to peek in. He'd suggested to Bud that Rei would be pleased if the creaky hinges were oiled, and the boy had proceeded to grease every hinge in the house into silken silence. His caution was rewarded: Rei slumped at her desk, a tome open beneath the pillow of her arms, the sound of her breathing the only one in the room. (Strange, with the exception of Pearl, Rei was the only person he'd met who didn't snore.)

Confident in the knowledge that the Sproutling who usually kept an eye on the front path would be as deep asleep as the rest of the house and the pet monsters, Elazul slipped out the front door and started making his way to the Tower of Leires.

———

"That stubborn, thick-headed, dirt-for-brains, sneaky sonnuva _polter box_!" swore Rei the next morning, volume increasing with every word until she was shouting. "I'm gonna wring his Jumi neck for him when I catch up!" Her hands flew, packing clean clothes for the five-day trip to Leires even as she snarled dire threats to Elazul's anatomy. "That idiot knows damned well he isn't strong enough to go larking off to the Tower by himself, and what does he do?"

"Sneaks out in the middle of the night to go larking off to the Tower," chorused Bud and Lisa from below. Rei stuck her head out long enough to raspberry her apprentices and their loyal chant of the complaint she's made a dozen times, then got back to packing. Nip would be staying here this time—_Might as well give someone a break,_ Rei thought wryly to herself—and Tsuta would get a chance to show off his watchsnake skills. The Rattler Boa, bigger than she was with an impressive hood-span, was better at intimidating would-be bandits than Nip, anyway, mostly because Rei kept encountering things who had somehow never seen just how nasty a Rabite could get.

Her things packed, Rei slung her bag onto her shoulder, checked the gold jewelry she wore that would expand into her armor when needed, and made sure her knives were in their places on her hips. She ran downstairs, whistled up Tsuta, and raced out her gate to Leires.

———

Somehow Rei didn't catch up to Elazul until the gates of the Tower, where she found him down on one knee, panting with effort, one hand over his core in an unconscious, protective gesture. He glanced up at her approaching footsteps and Tsuta's slithering over the path, then froze with an expression that would, under other circumstances, have made Rei burst into laughter. His face said, quite clearly, 'oh, _shit_.'

"Tell me, Elazul," Rei spoke in a calm, reasonable tone as she came even with the Knight, "are you suicidal by nature or has that wound in your core damaged your mind?"

"I had to come," he told her somewhat breathily, hand still over his core as though afraid Rei would finish Sandra's effort in a rage.

"I understand that, you idiot," she snapped back, "but look at you! This trip has you so worn out you can barely stand, and you haven't even gone through the gates yet!"

"I _was_ waiting for you."

Rei's fierce expression softened a bit. "Well, it's nice to know you haven't lost your wits completely. But I would have been happier about this if you'd waited just a few more days."

"I'm almost healed," Elazul assured her, uncovering his core so that she could see that the gash was the merest scratch in the material. The paler blue that had been filling the gash in had darkened to its' proper hue at the edges, blurring the lines until the paler color seemed a normal highlight. "I just…pushed myself harder than I probably should have."

The young woman rolled her eyes at the obviousness of that. "Well, duh. I can see that, Lord Understatement." She sighed, one hand rumpling her bangs as she studied her friend. "Do you even sense Pearl here?"

Elazul nodded. "It's faint, but not the same way it would be if she'd just spent time here. I'll bet Pearl's up in that room at the top."

Rei looked at him askance, then sent her gaze leaping the balconies visible from where they stood. "If you fall over, I don't care _how_ close we are to the top," she told him flatly, turning back to him at last. "I will haul your stubborn rump back home and tie you to my bed until you're strong enough to get yourself loose. Or until you annoy me enough that I'll let you run off and get killed, whichever comes first and depending on which knots I use."

Remembering the conversation he'd had with Lisa—well, _lecture_ would be more like it, Elazul amended—the Lapis Knight understood that Rei had said that because she cared, and that the second half of the threat was pure irritation that he'd insisted on coming here before he'd entirely healed. So instead of snapping back something that might have hurt more than he'd mean it to, Elazul just gave his friend a cocky smile and pushed himself to his feet. "Then give me a hand giving this Tower a thorough cleaning," he challenged, adding an inspired, "I'll bet even weakened as I am that I'll still kill more monsters than you."

His grin sparked an answering, wicked smile from green eyes and a plush mouth that was far more suited to smiling than the absent, mild frown it had been wearing. Rei tossed her hair over her shoulder, making the decorative pipes she wore in it chime, and tore the air with a wild-sharp laugh. "You're on, Elazul! First one to Pearl gets to swat her for making us worry!"

Blades aglow in the moonlight that was all the natural light Leires ever received, the two fighters strode up the path with a fierce-eyed serpent following at their heels.

———

Definitions/explanations:

Rei: My name for the female character you can choose to play. The other is male and wears a red hood instead of hairpipes.

Jumi and their cores: Jumi are a race of people who live with a jewel naturally growing from their sternums. It's surprisingly fragile; even a scratch can cause a lot of pain. If the stone (core) is removed, then the Jumi dies. Jumi are separated into two types: Knights, the protectors, and guardians, the healers. Before a massive war took place, Jumi could cry tears that could heal injuries, an ability that turned itself off after the war as a means of self-defense, since in the process of shedding tears the Jumi would be carving a little bit of their own life away. At the time of this adventure, guardians are the only Jumi left with the ability to cry, and only if they have reached their highest status, that of Clarius.

Following the stone theme, Jumi names are derived from jewels, and Knights take titles and signature stones. I.E. Knight of Ruby equals Rubens.

Alexandra/Sandra: A Jumi turned jewel thief and killer. During the course of the game she steals a number of her people's cores, though we find out she has a very misguided reason for doing this.

rocket papaya/apricat/peach-puppy: various strange fruits one can grow in your character's backyard orchard once a being called Gaeus is spoken with. They affect many things, from your pet monsters' behavior and strengths, to forging and making golems. These three are known for affecting calm and friendliness.

turning to stone: There is a proverb/warning that runs through the entirety of the Jumi saga, that if someone cries for the sake of a Jumi, then that person turns to stone.


End file.
